How was the photo taken?
Swarovski Crystal Heart
The idea behind this shot is to present the popular Swarovski crystal heart in a spectacular way, highlighting its multifaceted surface. If illuminated in the traditional manner for transparent objects, the heart looks quite trivial (see picture below). The reason for this is the low brightness contrast of the environment around it. In fact, the heart is composed of many prisms, and for this reason, it is difficult to "draw" it using black surfaces placed around it (as we would do with a glass or bottle). The specificity of the photographed object is a good reason to abandon some traditional approaches to shooting transparent objects. The shot you see below was taken against a black background.
The right half of the heart is outlined by a massive glare, whose intensity varies according to the tilt of the individual surfaces. As I mentioned above, the photographed object practically consists of many optical prisms (or wedges). We all learned in our first physics lessons that when passing through such objects, white light decomposes into its constituent spectral parts, and thus we can see a colorful palette of iridescent colors. This effect is used in shooting the heart, as the light passing through it is provided by two small reflectors, which are positioned as shown in the diagram below.
The main light source in this shot is a softbox 60 x 60 cm, which is placed on a DYNAPHOS C-H 800 monolight. Both reflectors are 56 cm in diameter, with the left one positioned above the photographed object and the right one below it. The white reflective surface was used for the left reflector, and the gold surface for the right one. The pleasant amber color in the upper left part of the heart is due to the gold reflective surface. Some might ask how the reflector is at the bottom right, while its effect is observed at the top left? Very simply - through the prism, we see an inverted image. The white reflector, which is placed above the photographed object, works in the same way, and its effect is observed in the lower part of the shot. As you can see, there is nothing complicated about this lighting setup. The main important conditions are that the reflectors are positioned precisely and that special attention is paid to the cleanliness of the photographed object.
©2008 Boris Bishkov, Dynaphos Ltd.
